


Sometimes

by TalesOfOnyxBats



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Dissociation, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Schizophrenia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 06:58:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18911875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalesOfOnyxBats/pseuds/TalesOfOnyxBats
Summary: "Sometimes I don't feel real."





	Sometimes

Sometimes the days felt disjointed. 

Sometimes none of it made sense. 

Sometimes…

 

Azula flexed her fingers and reached out to brush her hair out of her face. It was the first time she moved in days. The were times when she would stand for hours, at worst, days, holding herself uncannily rigid and in one spot. One position. 

At first they tried to movie her. They pushed and tugged but she remained sturdy, feet planted in place. They learned very quickly that it was either a waste of time or that there was dire consequence for having successfully jarred her out of whatever stance she froze herself in. 

 

In retrospect she could never recall why she had taken up such a position in the first place. She could never seem to tell them why she kept doing it when they asked. 

Her mind. 

Her mind. It was so fragmented. So chaotic. 

 

“Sometimes I don’t feel real.” Azula muttered. 

 

Zuko looked at her quizzically.

 

So she repeated herself and elaborated, “sometimes I don’t feel real.” She paused. “Sometimes I think that I’m the hallucination…” She didn’t know how to explain it. This sense that she wasn’t really there. That she didn’t really exist. It first took root upon seeing Ba Sing Se looking untouched; the drill cleared away and the hole repaired. There was no sign that the Fire Nation had ever been there. The seed flourished in seeing Omashu looking as Earth Kingdom as it ever had. All traces of her influence there had been removed. It looked as though she had never accomplished anything at all. 

Somehow things warped in her mind.

 

“Am I real, Zuko?”

 

The soft, calmness in her voice unsettled Zuko almost more than that shriller note that usually came to her voice in the midst of her destabilizing.

 

“Was I ever real?” 

 

Zuko took her hands. “You’re real.” She looked heavily skeptical so he clenched her hands harder. “You can feel that right?” 

 

Azula nodded. 

 

“If you can feel that, it means your real. Right?” 

 

This was where Azula wasn’t so certain. Perhaps she was only tricking herself into thinking that she could feel physical sensations. Or maybe she was hallucinating touch. Could hallucinations hallucinate. She clutched her head, it hurt so terribly. 

She was making it hurt. 

 

“You’re real, Azula.” Zuko repeated. 

 

What if he was mad and she was only a part of his imagination. And since he was mad, so was she because he was projecting himself onto her. She was only a facet of him. She gripped her head tighter. 

 

She was sure that this would be the position that she would remain in for a few days or at least several hours. 

 

Zuko was already trying to pry her out of it, much to her protests.For every, “go away!” He seemed to try harder. Only stopping when she hollered “don’t touch me.” It must have been in her eyes, a warning. Or maybe she had brought fire to her palms. Either which way, Zuko retreated. 

 

She was alone and it dawned upon her, why she was doing this. 

They made her remember. 

If they could make her hurt. 

If they all came up to gander at her…

 

It meant that she was real. She had to be if so many people were coming to view the spectacle. She she continued to make her scene. Yelling and screaming, a loud yet quiet all the same, request for help. A yearning for a reminder. 

 

They couldn’t get her to her bed that night nor the next. Nor even the one after that. Eventually her body buckled under the pressure of holding herself so still for so long. She was on the floor and unable to fight them off as they escorted her to the healers. 

 

And it passed. 

Suddenly she feels real again. 

A body that aches so much has to be real and physical. 

A mind that can find so much relief in healing had to belong to an ailing physical body. 

 

That time she welcomed comforting hands and gestures. It began to seep in…

She remembered…

 

Sometimes she loses track of time. 

Sometimes she forgets that they don’t hate her anymore. 

Sometimes she remembers that she’s mostly okay. 


End file.
